


warmth, a memory

by lochTenderness (theseourbodies)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Final Haikyuu Quest, Demon King Oikawa Tooru, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Isekai Elements, M/M, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27836110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/lochTenderness
Summary: Something has been encroaching on Oikawa in recent weeks, a creeping sense of unease in his motions, phantom pains in strange places where he has never received a mark. The pressure from before, the memory of strange words in his mouth—they had been an escalation, not an aberration, he thinks now.Demon King Oikawa confronts the band of adventurers for a Final Battle.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kuroo Tetsurou & Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34
Collections: IwaOi Week 2020





	warmth, a memory

**Author's Note:**

> Written for IwaOi Week 2020 Day 1: **mutual pining** | **fantasy** | tattoos/piercings | **touch**
> 
> I have been reading an alarming amount of "ive been reincarnated as the villainess/im the villainess and i have memories of a past life" comics and they're rUINING MY LIFE so here have some emotional hurt comfort fantasy along a similar theme, ft. my favorite bastard boy and his soulmate.

The ever-dark sky beyond the wide window flashes with ominous lightning. The Demon King doesn’t remember which kind kingdom had sent that particular curse, to keep his castle cloaked in mean, towering storm clouds. He wonders, sometimes, what the purpose had been. To frighten him with the darkness? To spook him with the thunder that shook the many glass panes in their leaded edges? Whatever the curse had meant to herald, the reason had never reached him, so Oikawa had never gotten the chance for clarity. 

Beyond the limited view beyond his window, he can visualize the movement of armies—his, and those of the kingdoms beyond his ever-expanding borders. Old Man Ukai’s reach was long indeed, he thinks sourly; long and still powerful enough to reach through even the weaker arms of his grandson. It would be a day before Karasuno’s flock of magpies would crash against Oikawa’s western flank; depending on their progress through the marsh he had grown specifically to thwart them, the Iron Wall would join them a minimum of half a day later. So terribly rude, he thinks with a gusty sigh. He feels a foreign petulance, an almost childish urge to pout about it; even in the privacy of his study he suppresses it ruthlessly, feeling unsettled. 

There are no creaking doors or dim passageways in the Demon King’s castle; he is a ruler, first and foremost, and the people he has collected—and managed to keep—deserve better than that, he’s always thought. Still, even with the wind doing its best to batter down walls and no light in the room to provide even the slightest cheating reflection against the window, he knows the instant that the grand door to his study eases open. 

“Hello Kuroo-kun. Isn’t this storm especially impressive today?” 

“Oikawa. They’re in the castle.” 

“Hm.” 

“…. Is there anything you’d like to say besides, ‘Hm’, _Highness?_ ” 

“Not particularly, old friend.” 

Kuroo strides up to press his shoulder against the window and stare the short distance down into Oikawa’s face as he leans there. 

“Yeah, and _speaking_ of old friends, do you happen to know how they got into the castle, Highness?” 

“Hm, I might,” Oikawa tells him, coy. The next flash of lightning betrays him; it’s an unnatural blue, and the sound of shattering glass from far away beats the deafening crack of thunder by a full five seconds. Scowling at his magic’s uncharacteristic betrayal, he turns from the window, lighting half the sconces on the walls with a careful wave of his hand. 

Kuroo, never one to let something so obvious go, presses the advantage. “So, you do know. At least he isn’t leading the charge.” 

“Ah, yes, but who do we have leading the charge, _old friend?_ A former officer of my armies, a no-name try-hard, that bear of a man from my _beloved_ friends from past the Iron Wall, and who else was it?” Oikawa taps his finger against his chin. “Hmm, let me _think._ ” 

Kuroo sighs. “Yeah, ok, guess I’m the pot and you’re the cauldron, huh? Still, how do you want to do this?” 

“Where are they?” 

“Here, see for yourself—” Kuroo lobs a glass ball across the short space between them for Oikawa to grab carefully. Reflected clearly in the center he sees them, a small group of five. He catalogs them dispassionately; he’s been collecting information slowly from his spies throughout the kingdom, but it’s different to see them for the first time with his own eyes. They’ve earned the right to stand at his doorstep, at least, he sees just from a glance. A light mage in a place like this would have been bad news enough; Oikawa knows his own limits intimately, and light magic has always been his greatest weakness. He feels the stones beneath his feet tremor lightly with each wave of the mage’s hands, the intermittent bursts from their staff. A light mage in this party might get them even further than Oikawa had anticipated. 

“The guard’s already dealing with them, but eventually we’re going to have to intervene.” 

Oikawa’s thoughts stutter abruptly as he turns to stare at Kuroo, still casually leaning against the huge window, backlit by the storm. In the half-light, his eyes flash ominously. 

“’We’?” 

Kuroo chuckles and stretches, breaking the illusion of something horribly patient and dangerously watchful abruptly. “Well, Highness, I’ve come this far with you. We’ve reached the crossroads; whatever your decision, I’ll follow you.” 

A crossroads means nothing to someone like Oikawa, he thinks. He’s taken a course; his pride won’t allow for a deviation, not now. 

_ <Don’t you ever forget this worthless pride.> _

Oikawa blinks, hard, to clear the sudden, intrusive thought. It echoes, a persistent, physical pressure; his mouth twitches down with the memory of the words he’s never spoken in his impeccable memory. 

“Oikawa?” Kuroo asks, more curious than concerned. “Everything alright?” 

Oikawa presses a hand to his temple, but as quickly as the pressure had come upon him it disappears. “…Fine. I’m fine. And thank you, Kuroo-kun.” 

“Hm, no problem. So, what’s the plan?” 

“Reach out to Kyoko-chan, will you? Tell her I need her little gremlins, if she can spare them. And Kuroo-kun?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Unlock the dungeon door for me, will you? I’ll let our wild dog keep them company for me.” 

Kuroo snorts, but he’s already letting the key-spell twirl through his fingers. “And what exactly are you going to be doing, Highness?” 

Oikawa chuckles. “We have guests in the castle, Kuroo-kun. I can’t exactly see them looking like this, can I?” 

After all, what was the point of a name like Demon King if he didn’t dress the part? 

\--- 

The horns had come in one day with the first spring flowers, before someone had cursed the skies over his castle but after Iwaizumi had left. Oikawa has never been sure if they were also curse-born or the result of the deals he had made; now he barely thinks of a time before them, so it’s as if they have always been a part of him. Certainly, they’re striking; fitting, for a presence like his, he thinks as he distractedly flicks his hair to lay flat around them. 

He knows that he has to be the final stage; that if this merry band of fools make it past his vanguard, he really be the only one that will stop them. Not because Kuroo or Kiyoko were less able; this is simply the way that these stories go—he’s the final encounter, regardless of his anxieties. 

Oikawa adjusts his circlet minutely as he frowns into his looking glass. Stories? Encounters? Has he heard a story like his own before? Perhaps the themes, in some of the stories of his childhood? But he had never been a child much interested in fairy stories, and certainly the few he vaguely remembered had never been set into stages or encounters like the machinations of some fantastical high court. He leans both hands onto the frame of the glass, succumbing finally to the unease that has been haunting him since Kuroo had come to him in his study. 

Something has been encroaching on him in recent weeks, a creeping sense of unease in his motions, phantom pains in strange places where he has never received a mark. The pressure from before, the memory of strange words in his mouth—they had been an escalation, not an aberration, he thinks now. 

Another thing out of his control. He clenches his resting hands into fists and breathes deeply, seeking calm. Curses and betrayals, and now strange creeping things to mess with his mind. What is goodness, if it prays upon its enemies like a jackal at night? He has never sent a curse or set a hex onto another person, human or not. Is there really so much wrong with wanting a place in the world? Is it really so bad that he desires power and that he was able to take it? 

He feels a tickle beside his nose; before he can swipe it away, a tear falls onto the mirror face with a whisper of sound. Demon King Oikawa, Heir of the Legion of Thousands, stares at his own face, crying in a looking glass with dumb shock. A strange shift occurs; horror grips him as he cannot recognize the face looking back at him, the scar bisecting his eyebrow or the paleness of his lips and skin. His eyes are strangers, too dark with their slit pupils. He jerks away from that demon there, and then scrambles with strange, coltish reflexes to catch it before the mirror falls from its stand. His hands are familiar, the careful claws there against his pale strong hand. Trembling with fear and nausea, he forces himself to look at himself again in the righted looking glass. 

Dark curling horns through his clean hair; eyes as dark as they’ve been for years. He jerks a flame from a nearby sconce with a flick of his wrist and barely a thought. His pupils react as they always have, shrinking to slits as the light comes nearer. They are not strange to him, not like they were when he was younger and still adapting. His face, he sees, is familiar to him again; the shape of the overwhelming horror that had gripped him so tightly fades quickly, ushered away like a bad dream. 

Shaken deeply, Oikawa abandons his mirror and reaches for his cloak. He swirls it around his shoulders and strides for his throne room, forcing his thoughts to the task at hand. 

\--- 

Tobio had been an inevitable loss, when he had left; Oikawa had not wanted to keep him, and so, in a way, he had always been free to leave. When Tobio and his merry band take the throne room, it doesn’t hurt to see him at the head, leading them like a true, straight arrow. The years have been good to the boy that Oikawa remembers—his petulant, pouting mouth has become serious and stern, and he’s finally grown into the promise of his hands and shoulders. The tiny man who races in beside him is so much his opposite that it’s almost comical to see; Oikawa had of course seen him in Kuroo’s scrying spell, but the man in person is a thing of perpetual motion. He doesn’t make a single mark on the ether; magicless, then, but powerful in spirit, Oikawa sees. 

They have lost their little light mage; whether they were left behind to recover or they are out of the fight completely, Oikawa at least hopes that Kuroo was able to see them again. Kuroo’s loyalty is strange, but permanent; he would have fought these invaders with everything he had, but he would made sure his little light mage was safe to the end. 

Tobio’s pet bear, a man Oikawa recognizes from the reports as Aone, comes in just behind Tobio and his bright companion, and then, of course: Iwaizumi, just as battle-battered as his companions but shining, shining. 

_ <Iwa-chan _ _!_ _ > _

Oikawa shakes the thought away furiously and waits. The cloaking spell around his throne is powerful and expansive; he can see the second that Tobio and the shrimpy—shrimpy? What?—enter the area of the spell’s effect. Tobio stops as if he’s just run into a wall, rigid; his smaller companion struggles on for a few steps more, but his body forces him off the original direct path staggering step by staggering step. Aone reaches out and pulls him back finally; Oikawa doesn’t miss he and Iwaizumi carefully and silently noting when the shrimp leaves the area of effect with a squawk and a flail. Iwaizumi himself hauls Tobio back, and Oikawa doesn’t snarl out loud at that only because the spell isn’t designed to stop sounds from traveling from the massive throne. 

“Oikawa-san!” Tobio shouts as soon as he manages to shake the nauseous look off his face. “We know you’re here!” 

While the spell hiding him from view might not protect him from being heard, it does allow him to distort the sound that it allows through. His voice echoes eerily when he finally laughs, bouncing and reflecting off of unseen barriers. He sees Tobio’s companion’s knuckles go white around the hilt of his sword as the rest of them go gratifyingly tense. 

“I’m right here, Tobio-chan. I wouldn’t leave you waiting for me.” 

“Where are you, Great King?!” Yells shrimpy. All the hair on the back of Oikawa’s neck rises, but he ignores the feeling stubbornly. He’s never heard anyone refer to him as a “Great King”. 

“Shut up, idiot Hinata! Oikawa-san, please. Come out and face us.” 

Oikawa narrows his eyes at the implication of cowardice. 

“Well, since you asked so nicely—how can I refuse?” At the barest touch of his will, the spell warps around him; to the little warrior band watching, he shimmers into existence already lounging on his throne between one blink and the next. Hinata shouts out loud in alarm and even Tobio jerks back in shock. Oikawa tells himself that that’s what matters, and not the fact that he can see Iwaizumi actively and rudely roll his eyes at the display. 

“W-We don’t have time for this, Oikawa-san! We’ve made our way here, and we’re not leaving until you break whatever deal you’ve made for the army of the dead!” 

Oikawa forces himself to grin through the rage seething in his chest. “Tobio-chan, always such a rude boy. I thought I taught you better than to make demands like a little tyrant. Ask me nicely, and maybe I’ll consider telling you no politely, instead of _blasting you off the side of this mountain,_ castle be damned.” 

“Can he do that? Can you do that, really, Demon King?” Hinata asks, bright eyed with what looks like interest instead of fear. It throws Oikawa, but he tosses his head to hide the discomfort at the unexpected reaction. Interesting companions Iwaizumi’s traveling with, it seems. 

“Of course I can. But only if Tobio-chan really makes me mad. Otherwise, I think I’ll just be content beating you and your pathetic rebellion back into obscurity, where you belong.” His smile feels nasty and sharp on his face; he pulls the faintest trace of the Deep into his voice, to let his opponents taste a fraction of the power they’re facing. They had made it through the guardian hordes and Kuroo’s magic labyrinth, but they were sorely mistaken if they thought that Demon King Oikawa would allow them through without killing himself to stop them. 

Iwaizumi remains silent throughout the entire exchange, sterner now than he had been as a much younger man, shouting at Oikawa until he was red in the face. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, not any worse than it had when he had finally left Oikawa to his bright, empty castle and his plots and plans, to the deep, old magic that filled him and fascinated him completely. Iwaizumi had called Oikawa a stranger to him before he had left; it seems that his attitude hasn’t changed, and this old fact doesn’t have the power to hurt Oikawa anymore. It doesn’t. 

He rises gracefully and takes a ready stance. Across the expanse of the throne room, Tobio draws back the arrow already fitted to the string. It glows a menacing blue, lighting his features like a devil’s. “Oikawa-san, this is your last warning!” He shouts, but it’s too late for that, Oikawa thinks. Huge Aone settles one fist in the palm of his opposite hand and starts to glow a steady, soft silver; Iwaizumi and the shrimp raise their blades in ready stances, obviously exhausted but determined—Iwaizumi’s blade dips noticeably, and the mean, small part of Oikawa left over from when he was a desperate, small man, is gleeful. 

Oikawa crosses his wrists in front of his face just as Tobio lets loose his arrow with a booming shout; Hinata lets out a battle cry and then: the final battle starts in earnest. 

\--- 

Four against one is never ideal, especially when the ability of at least two players are mostly unknown to him, but Oikawa didn’t become the warlock he was by accident or twist of fate; he’s worked hard for his prowess, and his skill doesn’t fail him now. His shield spell sends Tobio’s arrow astray easily, despite the other man’s magic guiding it. Now that he knows it’s there, Hinata starts making headway on the barrier, the power of his spirit almost a physical glow around him. Whatever spell Aone is preparing must be a buff; without it, Hinata has to know that he will exhaust himself before he even comes within swinging range of Oikawa. Oikawa keeps half his attention on him anyway, in case of surprises; he had noticed, in the intermittent reports that had reached him about Tobio’s antics, that shrimpy Hinata kept some impressive surprises hidden in that tiny body. 

Regardless, the real threat in close combat had always been Iwaizumi—or rather, the augmented broadsword that he was haltingly attempting to level at Oikawa. He remembers the blade—he’d been the one that had commissioned it for his newly-minted guard captain when they had been younger and inseparable. When they had been young and—younger and— 

_ <You’re the partner that I chose _ _…. An amazing …._ _Even if…changes, that won’t change. But when we fight_ _\-- > _

_ <I will beat you.> _

It’s not pressure, now, it’s pain, hard like an iron spike to the temple and it nearly takes Oikawa’s knees out from under him. His shoulder throbs sharply, deep in the muscle, pounding in time with a bone deep ache in his knee. He gets one hand up with a grunt, furious—at the pain, at this foreign, agonizing memory-not-memory of this stranger wearing Iwaizumi Hajime’s face, a Hajime out of armor and set against an endless nebula sky, face nipped red by the same cold wind biting at Tooru’s nose, the tops of his cheeks, and burning where the skin is swollen from crying, from another loss, the last loss, the worst one. But Hajime is there, there in clean white and a blue the same shade as Oikawa’s magic. Hajime is there, and he’s all Tooru’s ever really needed except for the game— the game, _what_ _game—_

Oikawa is loyal to the loyalty of others, but in the end, it is not Kuroo’s bone deep and unshakeable devotion. Oikawa has never been able to hold anything back, about himself, to help himself, and so when he lashes out against the pain and the strange vision of a Hajime that stayed, a Hajime that _doesn’t exist_ , it’s with the full weight of all his terrible power behind it . With a word that has no sound in this plane of existence , only _force_ and _power_ _,_ Oikawa scatters them all away from him . Energy ripples towards him from the air, the stones under their feet, to collect in Oikawa’s raised palm. The pain in his head, in his body, reaches an all-mighty crescendo just as the bolt of magic, a lighter blue than Tobio’s , rips away from him, towards his former friend and his band of traitors. Iwaizumi’s eyes go huge —but just before the bolt hits, he tosses his sword aside and throws up both hands in front of him, a classic base for a powerful barricade spell—a powerful spell that Iwaizumi wouldn’t have the ability to learn, let alone use. But the barrier—the barrier of _light_ —blasts out from the triangle of his spread hands to redirect the energy bolt just enough, sending it smashing into the intricately carved doorway behind the little cluster of fighters. 

“Iwaizumi!” The _fake_ Iwaizumi shouts just before the glamor shatters apart and the little light mage crumples to their knees under the weight of Iwaizumi’s armor. “Now!” 

Oikawa, reeling, doesn’t get the chance to even see the real Iwaizumi coming. Iwaizumi hits him in a cross tackle that sends them both rolling to the ground. No one wrestles with the Demon King; the physicality of the attack is totally foreign to all of Oikawa’s hard-won battle senses; he only realizes that Iwaizumi’s attempting to bind him when he feels the new and agonizing pull just the right of his heart in his chest—a magic drain. He screams, furious, terrified, this isn’t how it was supposed to be, this isn’t how it was supposed to go, he doesn’t want to be the bad guy if he can’t _win._ What was the point of all this, everything he’d ever worked for, everything he’d ever given up, _why—_

“I-Iwa-chan, please, don’t, don’t--!” 

But Iwaizumi doesn’t stop; Oikawa watches his expression contort when he hears Tooru’s suddenly high, agonized voice. It shocks him into stillness; he lays there and trembles and watches Iwaizumi’s miserable face as he finishes the last binding and steals everything Oikawa’s worked for right out of his hands. 

The pull next to his heart pinches sharply just once more, and Oikawa snarls at the temporary agony. It hurts, it _hurts,_ and the fact that this pain is real, and not a phantom pain borrowed from some alternate reality doesn’t make Oikawa feel better for even an instant. He pants weakly, struggling against the weight of failure and Iwaizumi Hajime, still half kneeling on his chest, muttering above him. 

“….sorry, Sorry, I’m sorry Tooru, I’m—” 

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whispers, _Tooru_ whispers, “Why am I always the bad guy?” 

Iwaizumi makes an agonized sound over him and crashes to the ground beside him. Tooru expects to be left there while this noble band of try-hards make their way to ruin the rest of his best laid plans; instead Iwaizumi hauls him close, tucks all of Tooru’s long, lean body into his lap so he can tuck Tooru’s head under his chin. 

“Just go,” he says in an exhausted voice, and it takes Tooru a heart-stopping moment to realize that Hajime isn’t talking to him. “I have him. Just do what you need to do.” 

_I have him._ Tooru repeats to himself, letting himself crumple into Hajime, a deadweight. He looks for anger; he looks for that familiar, icy perseverance, that same useless pride, but all he feels is warmth. Warmth like he hadn’t felt in years, but that his body could never forget. 

“It’s done, Tooru. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

“I’ll kill you for this,” Oikawa tries to say, but the words feel wooden in his mouth, toneless. It’s not what he wants to say, it’s not what he wants to do. He wants to stand on foreign soil against a backdrop of endless stars with Hajime. He wants Hajime to choose him again, to choose to stay. 

“I know. You can. You can, just let them do this. You can hate me for the rest of your life, just—just let me—” 

Hajime presses his hand to the back of Tooru’s head, presses the two of them together even closer. Bound at the wrist, magicless, Tooru still leans into him as hard as he can. He feels it, even in this state, when the contract breaks. It’s not that some place that was empty in him fills, or that something broken is repaired; it’s that something shifts, clicks into a new position. He watches, dispassionately, as the glowing red stone on its chain around his neck goes dull and crumbles into meangingless, worthless pieces. 

Hajime pets at his hair and hums a song that Tooru didn’t know he himself remembered until the first few scratchy bars knit themselves together into a tune that echoes forward in his memory from the time before, before Tooru was a king or even a knight; back when he was a boy tagging earnestly along beside Iwaizumi Hajime, his Hajime, the only thing he had ever needed besides the magic thrumming in Tooru’s veins. 

“I don’t want to be the villain anymore, Hajime,” he whispers. Tooru’s remained dry eyed, and he’ll stay that way or die trying, he thinks. But his throat is still terrible and tight, his body fighting the tears with all its might. 

“You don’t have to be. You don’t ever have to be again, but this is what it takes. To us, this is what it takes. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

But Tooru feels that something has changed in him, and he knows—the power is still there. The magic, held away from him now, will come back. But if the encroachment of those memories that were his and not-his, the memories of another life or another reality had come with blinding pain, they had also revealed something to Tooru: something dark, playing with the strings of his lonely heart and preying on the ambitions of his eager mind. That dark something had been burned away or bled dry, and Tooru can see the world and the way forward more clearly than he ever has. 

“I was so angry at you, when you saw me again and all you could do was roll your eyes at me,” he murmurs into Hajime’s shoulder. “I’m glad it was Kuroo’s light mage, and not you.” 

“….God. I’m a mess, you know. You always do this; you ruin my composure.” 

“I like you a mess.” 

Hajime let’s out a shaking breath that tries very hard to be a laugh. “You’re terrible.” 

“Hajime! Don’t be mean to me!” 

Hajime’s second attempt at a laugh is much more successful than his first. It ruffles the hair over Tooru’s ear; Tooru closes his eyes against the sensation. 

“So, I can’t make fun of your horns, then?” 

“You don’t like them?” 

“They’re a little much.” 

“Hajime has such bad taste! A Demon King needs horns you know!” 

“Hmm, well what about a normal, everyday king?” 

Tooru’s reply is cut off with a gasp at the sensation of his magic flooding back into him, only slightly less painful than the earlier feeling of his magic being pulled from him. 

“H-Hajime—” 

“You’re still one of the most powerful warlocks in ten generations, Tooru,” Hajime tells him as he gently chafes Tooru’s wrists where they’d been reddened by the bindings. “You still have friends and allies and a kingdom. The Legion of Thousands has been destroyed, but you can build a new army, a better one. You can kill me or just leave; I can’t stop you.” 

Tooru swallows painfully at the thought of killing Hajime. He pulls away just far enough to stare at Hajime’s face as he talks. They way that they’re tangled with one another feels—different, with Tooru unbound and powerful again. Tooru had liked it before; he thinks he likes it more, now. 

“I can’t stop you,” Hajime says again, “but I hope you’ll stay.” Hajime nods jerkily, his awkward boyhood exposed suddenly, endearingly. 

“That’s it?” Tooru asks, biting back a smile. “Nothing else?” 

Hajime shakes his head, a stern frown on his face. His eyes are so terribly earnest. “It has to be your choice. Wherever you go from here, it’s for you to decide. I don’t—I can’t—Well.” He looks away and down, pawing at the back of his neck. “You know.” 

“Stupid Hajime,” Tooru says softly, “Stupid, _stupid,_ man.” 

“Oi—mmph!” 

Before Hajime had left, out of fear and desperation for Tooru, they hadn’t—they hadn’t ever crossed this line. When they had grown out of boyhood and gone to seek the knighthood together, it hadn’t seemed right, to demand even more of Hajime than he had already freely given to Tooru. But that hadn’t mean that Tooru hadn’t loved him, hadn’t felt some solid place in his soul created just for the feeling of Hajime beside him. 

His soul still carries that space, that perfect blending of the two of them together, stepping in perfect time. This is separate from that, no less powerful but fiercer in this single moment. The way that Tooru can press so close to Hajime and the way that Hajime will just bend around him and hold him closer, that is their souls; the way that Hajime gasps into his mouth and clenches his powerful hands in Tooru’s hair, the way that Tooru can taste his heart beating, that is something new, the same and different. He curls his arms around Hajime’s neck and let’s himself be held until Hinata’s sharp little voice croaks behind them. 

“Stupid Hinata,” Tobio hisses next, and Tooru sighs into Hajime’s mouth, deeply aggrieved. 

“Alright, alright,” he mutters; Hajime, useless bastard, buries his face in Tooru’s shoulder as he shakes laughing. 

“Tobio-chan, you wretched child, come here and help me up,” Tooru says imperiously, flapping a hand above his head vaguely. “I need to see how terrible you all have wrecked my very nice friends and my very nice castle.” 

“Kuroo’s fine,” the light mage interjects quietly. “It took a while, but we were able to knock him out safely.” 

“Ah. And the lovely Kiyoko-chan? My guard captain?” 

“Bound up with her minions out in the crystal garden outside. Very nice work on those, by the way,” the light mage says in a monotone at the ground between them. Tooru cocks a brow at Hajime when the man deigns to look up again, but Hajime just shrugs. _That’s just how_ _they are_ , the shrug says. 

“Well then, if Aone-kun wouldn’t mind reviving that fool Kuroo, I am willingly surrendering myself to your tender mercies as of this moment.” 

Hajime rolls his eyes—for real this time, and it’s a wonder that Tooru hadn’t caught on to the glamour earlier; Hajime’s eyerolls have always had a specific weight to them that no light trick could duplicate—and accepts the hand that Aone wordlessly extends down to him. He carries Tooru up with him, which is exactly as thrilling and embarrassing as Tooru had always secretly thought it would be, and they face the gaping expressions on Tobio’s and Hinata’s faces with as much dignity as possible—that is, an incredible amount of dignity for Tooru, considering, and none for Hajime, who never had any dignity to begin with. 

“I can see from the look on your face that you’re thinking something shitty,” Hajime mutters at him as they make their way towards the stone labyrinth now utterly ruining the layout of Tooru’s castle. 

“Rude, Hajime.” 

“Yeah, well. You knew that already, before.” 

_Before you kissed me, before I ran away, before all of this started,_ Tooru mentally fills in, and he can’t help the smile on his face when he leans in to kiss Hajime’s serious mouth silly again. 

“I did,” he whispers when he pulls back the tiniest bit. “I do.” 

Distantly, he realizes he can’t hear the familiar crash of thunder, or the pounding of the rain. Hajime looks up at him with those same, serious eyes he’s always had, even when he was a child, even in that other world where magic didn’t exist, but the game did. 

Shuffling past a window, he pauses just long enough to look at his reflection, an unfamiliar and wide-eyed version of himself. He smiles, as softly and as genuinely as he can, and he silently hopes that that other him, that strange, softer version of himself, found his way back to his Hajime, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on the bird app if you'd like: [@theseourbodies](https://twitter.com/theseourbodies)


End file.
